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Water from rivers/lakes?


artimaes

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I was wondering, and to be honest what I am about to suggest is what I expected to find ingame and I was actually surprised this was not implemented or in the planned features as a "coming soon" sort of thing because of the scarcity of the water resource after water shuts off.

 

TL;DR= Fill water containers at water tiles(river and lake) adjacent to shores and docks.  Ideally at some point make it so it has to be boiled for consumption or cooking but can be used straight for farming.  

 

I was thinking about where I want to set up my survival home, and my friend wanted to set up in the woods at a house nearish to the city but far enough out to have few zombies wander in, but I told him the water will shut off and we won't be able to drink and farm and cook if we have no water source.  There weren't any wells that were less than an absurdly long walk from civilization(venturing into town to loot is super fun), and he suggested rain barrels but my reasoning was that those might be alright at first and in some seasons, but they will run out quickly during the seasons when it doesn't rain a lot and in winter they will probably freeze or at least not fill up with the snowfall.  So I suggested what we really need to do is set up base on a river or lake, so we can use buckets and kettles and stuff to get water from the river, use it straight out of the river for farming and I said we will probably have to boil it to have it safe for drinking and cooking but we can set up at a location with a stove or we can just set up a fire for that.  I thought for sure that was the intended method of getting water for long term survival...I was outvoted by my brother and friend who wanted to set up away from the water and so I just now got around to taking some resources out to a dock that's just far enough away from the town to be safe-ish but close enough for raiding excursions to be launched from it.  I brought everything I would need, I thought, because I would be getting my water from the river, some food from the river, and I'd be able to boil water and cook on a campfire inside the walls I build there.  To my great surprise, I found that I could not fill up water containers in the river.  I have no water source, despite being right next to a river, and have to build a ton of rain barrels(they don't give much water so for farming in addition to drinking and cooking I need a lot of them).

     Even without the relatively advanced system of having potable and non-potable water and having to boil river water(or potentially adding water bottles with the filters in them) to make it potable, could we please at least get the river water to have the option added like a sink does to fill water bottles and possible drink?  

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100% agree with everything you posted!

 

If I want to drink from a river, I should be able to drink from a river! If I am dying of thirst, then I might be damned if I drink from the river, but if I don't drink I am definitely damned. Might as well give it a go and hope for the best.

 

Ideally adding a system to filter (sand, charcoal filter) and a way to purify (tablets or boiling) would be great!

 

This can not be that hard to implement. I am no dev, but there appears to be a process already in game to add an attribute to tiles (ie Fishing or Foraging on tiles), so it shouldn't be that hard to also add the ability to get water from the river. Is tile a water source? 'yes' .  If 'yes' how much water is on tile? 'X' . If 'X' amount of water present, character can now draw water from water tile.

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yeah, I remember I was fishing and my character was dehydrated and the fact that I couldn't just get some water from the river really pissed me off.

Yeah having to build a rain catcher barrel at my fishing safehouse near the river because the water is turned off made me chuckle quite a bit.

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they don't give much water so for farming in addition to drinking and cooking I need a lot of them

 

They yield plenty of water for farming - you just need to make sure that you fill from a rain collector with a cooking pot/pot of water first before filling anything else.  Its somewhat of a bug/glitch - items will take the same amount of water when its drawn from no matter the capacity: example is that you can fill a water bottle 4 times from the first level water collector before its dry but you can also fill a cooking pot 4 times (and a full pot of water will fill multiple empty water bottles).  So acquire many water pots, build a couple of rain collectors, fill the water pots from the rain collectors, and fill all the other water carriers from the pots of water.  Also, don't use your water bottle to water the farms; drop your water bottle and use a pot of water (it'll draw from the waterbottle first so drop it or put it in your backpack) - from seeds you can use two full Pots of Water to water three seedling plots enough to start them growing - for simplicity I do it in increments of 40 - two 40s on the first, the last 40 from the first pot on the second plot, two 40s on the third plot then the last 40 back to the second plot.  Using a water bottle can very well do this but you have to stop to refill it from a pot of water more often (thus a slower, inefficient method).  And since you can fill a cooking pot 4 times from a full water collector you can conceivably start farming six plots of seedlings, where as if you fill a bottle of water straight from a collector you're only going to get a single seedling plot underway before that collector is dry.

 

I'm sorta-pro water tiles yielding water but not until a 'clean water'/'dirty water' dynamic is implemented.  And having to boil 'dirty' water to make it 'clean'/potable means long term survival needs to get choppin' wood and hoarding matches and lighters.  Which I'm all for.

 

the cooking pot-over-bottle water filling also works for toilets, sinks and bathtubs - you can get far more water to utilize by filling up the cooking pot first.  After the water is shut off you can get two fills from those before dry - use that to fill all of the cooking pots you find in houses you raid and leave them there for later retrieval if necessary/just in case.

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I've been doing some of this already .... in the early game while water services are still on I fill anything I can find in every building I go to, cooking pots first ... and generally just leave the potted water there .. especially since I tend to play several characters through the same map instance ... so many of them start life with no water or electricity services at all

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Great Idea.

 

Thing that should be kept in mind is that some chemical industries upstream of river might spillway with some deadly chemicals. Especially in a case of zombie apocalypse when these industries not controlled by human.

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They yield plenty of water for farming - you just need to make sure that you fill from a rain collector with a cooking pot/pot of water first before filling anything else.  Its somewhat of a bug/glitch - items will take the same amount of water when its drawn from no matter the capacity: example is that you can fill a water bottle 4 times from the first level water collector before its dry but you can also fill a cooking pot 4 times (and a full pot of water will fill multiple empty water bottles). 

 

If thats the case, thats a bug that should probably be reported.

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I agree with the idea for drinking from the river and lakes and what not but i also think that it would be useful if you could use it for farming too. Like dig irrigation trenches that can go for like 15 tiles before the stream becomes useless. Each tile would gain some amount of water but could become over watered if to close. It would help farming.

Second off i feel there should be chemicals and ways to filter it for example:

Making a filter out of sand,rocks, and a pair of pants. (Yes it works)

Finding a filter or water purification tablets.

Using a bit of bleach (At the risk of poisoning yourself unless at a high cooking level.)

Digging a trench near the water where the water seeps in over time (By digging a hole 2-4 blocks away from the stream)

Now expanding on the sentence above if the hole is closer it fills faster but may still have some contaminants while if farther away the lower risk for slower water.

Just my idea that i could think of right now. 

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